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Neuroscience Psychology

Perception

Perception can be defined as the ability we have to perceive stimuli through our senses and make sense of them in a particular way.

Therefore, we mentally construct reality out of our perception, by creating associations between previous and present experiences through cognitive processes.

Our perception process does the job of selecting, identifying, organizing, and interpreting the sensory information bringing into existence, in this way, new memories and consequently knowledge of our cognitive-generated sense of our unique reality.

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Psychology

Cognition

The ability of thinking, understanding, or awareness.

Cognition is defined as the mental function of assembling information and understanding it.

We use cognition for every single one of our mental processes. Cognition intervenes and surrounds our perception of reality, memory creation, attention, evaluation, judgment, reasoning, calculation, comprehension, learning, problem solving, decision making, and the use of systems of communication like language.

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Neuroscience

Motivational Neural Circuitry – Reward Neuroscience

Every new experience that we have creates neural pathways in our nervous system making possible, in this way, the sharing of electrochemical between neurons located in different parts of the brain and nervous system.

And when we repeat a specific experience we create a new neural pathway each time we repeat it. Also, we relate those new pathways created with the ones created previously (while having the same kind of experience) and we related them with the subconscious perceptions, reactions, thoughts, and other memories surrounding the experience.

Because of the accumulation of information surrounded an specific experience, the brain makes sense of what it is and how it makes us feel, the effect it had on us, emotionally and physically, all according to the unconscious memory associations created by the brain.

In terms of reward, depending on how strong the memory associations are, we tend and can be motivated to repeat pleasant experiences and try to avoid the experiences that gave us an unpleasant effect. And, as well, to be indifferent or neutral about stuff we didn’t create associations yet.

We have limited control of how we store information but knowing how this works. we can tell why we react in ways we do when in contact with certain information and what drives our actions and behavior. Including why get motivated to decide taking distinct actions when presented with particular perceptions.

Motivation and reward to take specific actions are triggered by our memories relating to specific subjects. This system of neural pathways and associations is known as motivational circuitry or motivational neural circuit or reward system.

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Psychology

Stimulus and Human Stimuli – Behavioral Psychology

Stimulus is the impetus, the stimulation, the inciting thing or event that provokes a particular and detectable physical or chemical change or functional reaction in an individual, organism, organ or any other biological unit.

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Neuroscience

Neural Pathways – Behavioural Science

Neural pathways are the structured neural connections between different parts of a nervous system that enables the propagation and process of electrochemical information from and to neuronal units.

The axons, nerve fibers projected from neurons —also known as one of the two types of cytoplasmic protrusions— enable the transmission of electrochemical impulses between neurons and between neural units and muscles and glands.

Categories
Psychology

What Stress Actually Is – Behavioural Psychology

Stress, in its most basic meaning, denotes and represents the pressure or tension that is exerted on a material object.

In psychological terms, stress is defined as a state of emotional or mental strain resulting from a perceived adverse or above normal levels of demanding situations.

This psychological stress can be emotional, cognitive and outer perceptual.

In behavioural psychological terms, the stress response can be compared with an alarm for awareness, and sustained over time can cause health harm.

Types of Stress

Acute Stress

The less damaging and the most common of the types of stress. It is experienced immediately after the perception of threat, either emotional, psychological, or physical danger.

The physical reaction to acute stress is the shunting of blood from extremities to big muscles to rapidly prepare the body to action into a corporal state of something called fight or flight response.

Acute stress can be especially dangerous to people with pre conditions like heart diseases.

Episodic Acute Stress

Acute stress becomes episodic acute stress when it presents itself suddenly and triggered easily becoming an ordinary event in the life of the individual affected by the condition.

Chronic Stress

A stress condition is considered chronic when the feeling of stress is long-lasting and constant.

Some causes of chronic stress can be challenging times, in terms of relationships or financial situation, or high-pressure daily activities.

Stress Management

Stress can be relieved, managed, prevented and even avoided, using relaxation techniques, developing stress coping skills, changing the situation, environment, and implementing habits to manage the influence of stress in our health, behavior, mood and sense of well-being.

Acute stress is the easiest to manage because it doesn’t long after it is triggered by the perception of threat.

Other Kinds Of Stress

There are additional kinds of stress that can affect your wellbeing and daily life, and some are easier to cope, to prevent, or to manage than others.

In psychosocial terms, we can consider stress as the outcome of personal relationship difficulties, professional relationship challenges, job and opportunities loss, material loss, personal loss, lack of resources, lack of satisfactory amount of social interaction, and social values crisis.

In physical terms, stress can denote a trauma, intense physical labor, environmental impact, illness, fatigue, hormonal or biochemical imbalances dietary, substance abuse, lacking, dental, and musculoskeletal imbalances.

The word ‘stress’ can be used in a sentence to emphasize and denote certain and distinct value and importance to a statement that someone makes in a given speech or writing.